


Time Apart

by Markov_Debris



Series: Company Series [7]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Episode: s01e12 Captain Jack Harkness, M/M, Torchwood Novel: The Twilight Streets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 14:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12412194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Markov_Debris/pseuds/Markov_Debris
Summary: Why Jack told the real Captain Harkness “There’s no one.”





	Time Apart

“What’s George doing dancing with a Jap.”

Jack tried not to let the smile fall from his face.  He had to be the confident, cocky Captain or they were going to turn on Tosh.

Toshiko was right this time was dangerous for her.  Her best chance was for her to return to the future, but if she did have the information the team needed in her laptop, then how were they going to be able to do it.

Without the full equation Ianto was never going to allow the others to open the rift.  They would have to lock him away first.

It wasn’t just a protocol to Ianto.  The Ghost Shift project had used a rift in time and space.  Ianto knew what dangers lay in opening the rift, feared them, more than anyone else at the Hub.

Jack retreated to the bar to keep an eye on his technical genius.  He was doing his best to make all thoughts about Ianto factual.

He wasn’t going to think about what he would have to tell Ianto when he waltzed into the Hub in sixty odd year’s time without his best friend.

He couldn’t go to the current team and have her frozen.  He couldn’t encounter Greg and Tilda.  She would never help and he was a tragedy Jack couldn’t face again, not when his thoughts were drawn to a different set of blue eyes and high cheekbones.

Jack knew he had to keep Toshiko occupied.  Give her hope until it was obvious there was none.  After all how likely was it that any message they left behind would survive all this time.

He had to concentrate on his part.  He was the heroic airman to those around him and the strong commander to Toshiko.  His personal thoughts, his thoughts of Ianto, were immaterial.

All the careful walls he was building up around his thoughts were bulldozed minutes after he rescued Tosh from her dance.  Destroyed by four words.

“I’m Captain Jack Harkness...”

When you’re a con artist you have to make sure that your mark never meets you again.  It isn’t fear of reprisal, it’s the fear of looking in their eyes again and seeing what you might have destroyed.

When the Doctor saved him from himself, it wasn’t his intended victim, the Time Agency, which he had had to face.  It was the unwitting victims of the Chula nanogenes.

Captain Jack Harkness was just a name and a war record.  Chosen because he was a conveniently dead RAF hero who fitted his physical description and war record needs.  Chosen because the syllables of his name sounded nice in the ex-Time Agent’s ears.

He hadn’t wanted to know that Captain Harkness looked like.  Hadn’t wanted to see what his victim looked like, didn’t want to know the spark of life, of humour and self depreciation.

Jack was unable to resist getting into conversation with him.  Captain Harkness had charisma and he was a leader.  He was the hero the coward wished he was.

“There’s no one.”

Jack couldn’t look Captain Harkness in the eye.  He hoped the look was interpreted as one of lonely regret and not see the twinge of guilt that was there too.

He encouraged Captain Harkness to go after his girl.  Not just to make sure he had a last night of happiness but because he really wished someone had given him that advice.

There was no one because he had never given himself to someone.  Never told _him_ his past, never told _him_ he couldn’t die and now it could be sixty years before he had the opportunity again and his first duty might be to tell him his best friend’s fate.

 _Ianto_.

The universe liked its cosmic jokes.  Captain Harkness was everything Jack wished to be and yet he reminded him unwillingly of Ianto.

Not his quietness but his reserve.  He had Ianto’s modesty that Jack found adorable and a touch of the Welshman’s humour.

As he watched Captain Harkness go after Nancy, the grief hit him.  There was no way for Toshiko’s equation to survive.  No possibility that Ianto would allow the others to open the rift.

He had to wait again, he had to hide and not cross his own timelines.  The goodbye kiss they had shared this morning was not going to be enough to hold him sane through these repeated years.

And Captain Harkness, Jack was never supposed to meet the man, like the man.  He wasn’t supposed to mix with his feelings for the Captain with his feelings for Ianto because the immortal wasn’t supposed to have these feelings for Ianto.

Now he had to live for decades, waiting.  All he ever seemed to do was wait, first for the Doctor and now for a young lover who parents hadn’t been born yet.

Jack didn’t know how he was going to cope.  Last time he had Torchwood, this time he would be alone.  Last time he didn’t know when he wait would end, this time he did and it was possible that he would not be forgiven for returning alone.

As Captain Harkness came back for him, he felt his heart lighten.  He shouldn’t have felt anything but he was hurting and this simple response, the tentative hand, shy request were what he needed, what he wanted.

The automatic rejection, the hasty retreat were like a blade slicing through his defences.  He told Tosh the story he should have told Ianto.

She was the only one to turn to.  The technical genius had in her quiet, shy, way become a very valued friend over the years.  Her understanding, her trust might not have been as deep as Ianto’s but he didn’t deserve them either.

Every promise he made to her about keeping her safe he intended to keep.  Alone in the dark she held his hand as he tried not to weep for two men.

The first he was, even now, trying not to even think about.  He let his quiet mask burying all his memories of Ianto Jones in a special place for the bleakest occasions.

The second, the man whose identity he stole, the man whose reputation he regretted almost harming with his arrogant con so long ago, Jack let growing feelings for Captain Harkness show.  Yet he, like a cad, used him still, used those burgeoning emotions to conceal his loss of the one he left behind.

Captain Harkness, who he liked, admired and was grieving for, because, despite him being alive and vibrant here, he was also long dead to Jack, walked across the dance floor.

Jack let him lead as he would have let Ianto lead.  He moved with him as he would have moved with Ianto, but as he did, he let Ianto’s ghost slip from him and he became beholden only to his tragic namesake.

The kiss was just for him.  It was a gift of hope, a gift of passion, a spark of love for a condemned man.

In that one moment the man he held was the only thing in the universe.  In that moment he felt his betrayal forgiven.

Jack slipped away with tears unrestrained because it was taking all his strength to move into the light, into the future.  Tosh didn’t look at him, she waited patiently giving him his private moment before they joined Gwen.

 

Hidden unseen a sinister man smiled.  Jack was making this so easy.

 

Fin.


End file.
